


79

by sapling



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M, driving lessons-freeform, it's only gay if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapling/pseuds/sapling
Summary: Stan wasn’t remarkable by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a distinct face and distinct voice he’s since memorized.





	79

**Author's Note:**

> ~~79 was the score needed to pass....my drivers test....~~
> 
> this is for staigweek 2018 and also for louise who gave me this prompt like six months ago and i never posted it.  
> i'm not exactly happy with the voice in this one but whatever just take it.

 

**_read at 05:43pm_ ** _  
**. . .**_

The longer he sat on the front steps of the ice skating rink, the more he wanted to jump and leave, but inertia was absent and his own recent stubbornness worked directly against him at the slightest attempt of movement.  

It was _cold_ , the wind whipped around the concrete pillar he rested against to remind him of just how stupidly cold it was and how the sweaty, acne-ridden, mouth-breathing twenty-something at the concessions counter wouldn’t let him sit inside unless Craig could prove he _did_ , in fact, spent his weekday afternoons running drills for his local high school hockey team. He could produce nothing of the sort, but he’d already slogged through an eternity’s worth of slush and avoided every patch of black ice on that section of road with no sidewalk that led to the training center—so turning back? Out of the question.

He absentmindedly checked his phone, swiping away the notifications that’d since piled up after arriving before tucking it back into his pocket. Craig’s eyebrows knitted as he turned his head towards the glass doors for maybe the fourth, fifth time since he arrived; there was no possible way that they could _still_ be practicing. His mistake for arriving a tad earlier than what he was gunning for, fine, but his phone was dying and it was almost dark. Craig felt the device vibrate in his hoodie in quick succession after the other, more group texts berating him for not showing up. Earlier that day during their study period, he regrettably blew off the promised afternoon with his tablemates for, well, whatever the fuck he was hoping to achieve by sitting there.

At some point his wait turned from necessity to spite, though the other party had no earthly idea how long Craig forced himself to stay and watch the parking lot empty itself out and the sun diminish from view just for the sake of claiming his birthright. By road test attempt #3, the local DMV and the single proctor that worked there knew him by name and face. If asked they could probably recite his social security number from having to reread the sheer amount of failed score sheets he came back in hand with. It was frustrating, embarrassing, but absolutely _nothing_ could amount to the visceral shame he felt choosing to sit outside waiting on _Stan Marsh_ to finish up hockey practice.

He told himself on the trip down the main road that this was silly, borderline pathetic even, however no one in his friend group owned a car that wasn’t in for repairs, much less a license to operate one. With his father working late nights and Craig’s own unwillingness to be chauffeured around for another whole semester before graduation, he reached a turning point he considered to have been forced upon him.

This was his final resort, it _had_ to be. Otherwise he’d just spent the entire day sweating bullets over nothing, his energy, and a whole hour waiting on the team’s star defenseman for no justifiable reason. On the extensive list of happenings he was willing to live with, doing anything with Stan in the equation was akin to betraying the very _essence_ of himself that believed Stan was still as ever obnoxious. A chore of a human being along with the rest of his band of idiots (that’d somewhat disbanded since middle school from their dysfunctional circle-jerk) but nevertheless made him ill to be around. He trusted his past experiences before he trusted anyone else.

Yet here he was.

Craig heaved a sigh, shifting his weight enough to no longer feel just numbness from the rear down as he heard the definite squeak of the doors swinging open at last with the first of the hockey team trickling out from practice. He began to push up to steady himself to a standing position expecting Stan to be among the herd, but the rest poured out in a deluge of sweat and post-practice banter without any sign of him.

Stan wasn’t remarkable by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a distinct face and distinct voice he’s since memorized. It’d be his luck if he skipped practice the day Craig found the gall to garbage whatever was left of his dignity. Maybe he deserved to walk through nearly three feet of snow for the rest of his stupid, shitty life in this stupid _shitty **backwater**_ —

“…Craig?”

Stan had left the building alone without the company of his other teammates that all piled into their own cars and broke the optional speed limit; no sooner than practice ended he plugged right back and shuffled through his music library with far too many files, half of which he hadn’t listened to in over a century but couldn’t be assed to tidy things up or add album art to. Before he could settle in for an hour’s worth of solitude, Stan noticed a familiar, ratty looking chullo poking from behind the pillar littered with flyers of old sporting events that threatened to rip away into the gusts of wind. His mind flipped through all the possibilities why the yearbook student would show up after and not during practice, how long he’d been sitting outside in the permafrost of their town, and who dropped him off. Though not far driving, it was a hell of a trip to make by foot from school; he knew this from experience.

With a start, Craig got to his feet as the other met him by the pillar at the edge of the concrete.

“If …you were waiting on someone, uh,” the shorter teen looked over Craig’s shoulder, not a soul in sight hardly, “They’re already gone, dude. But some of them were talking about heading to Shakey’s after so maybe—”

“I don’t care.”

Stan blinked at him, then frowned at him, and to Craig’s horror shoved past him without another word down the staircase nearly hitting him with the massive gym bag slung over his right shoulder. By the time he realized he effectively opened and shut an entire conversation without meaning to, Stan was halfway towards the bottom near the patch of ice he almost busted his ass on.

“—About _them_ , I don’t care about them. I was waiting on you,” he finally gave up, biting his tongue. “…listen, I need a favor.”

The boy froze, turning to the other senior whose face looked as if somebody just died.

“You need a favor,” Stan began, slowly, carefully, “...you need a favor from _me_.”

And hence came forth another revelation on top of how _easy_ he strayed from his own deeply ingrained truths, an entire eight years of practiced, passive aggressive interactions to keep true to unspoken vow of never giving him the time of day no matter how dire the situation as he’d be better off alone with no lifeline whatsoever than with the likes of _him:_

Unfortunately, Stan wasn’t terrible up close.

He was just visibly tired, a bit sweaty, and most of all reasonably confused, “Dude, how’d you even know I had practice today? I never took you for a stalker.”

He could’ve choked, “I—the fuck? I just overheard.” His prayers of this not coming off as weird and invasive were left unanswered. Craig asked Token to bother Kyle for it on a whim since they shared a period together, predictably he still knew his usual habits and schedule as if his life depended on it all these years later despite hardly being seen together, “Not like I could help it, the whole lunchroom can hear your table’s conversation. You’re louder than the whole football team.”

“... _uh-huh_ ,” Stan blew him off with ease and tugged on the strap of his gym bag, eyeing him in disbelief before turning to his car at the far end of the mostly vacant parking lot, “Look, I’m heading home—what do you want?”

“Right, so.” Craig looked away from him towards the ground as if it’d spell his response out for him, and he sighed when it didn’t, “I’m about to get a car that I won’t be able to drive because I don’t have a license.”

“How generous of you. Went straight from hating me for no reason to giving me a brand-new car.”

No reason was an understatement, an insult even, however his feelings toward Stan did not equate to the burning hate he reserved for bigger matters. It was inconvenient then, and _only_ then, that his behavior towards him translated that way. He’d always been straightforward, not one to be unpacked or intentions analyzed when it came to how he interacted with others. His next jerk-reaction would’ve been a ‘fuck you’, and he would truly mean ‘ _fuck you_ ’, from the very bottom of his heart, but ultimately wouldn’t mean that he no longer needed Stan. He took pause instead.

“I’m not giving you my car, I’m asking you to _help_ me _get_ a license so I can _drive_ the stupid car, ok?” he even added hard inflections for emphasis, something once thought impossible by the rest of his peers, “Will you help me: yes or no.”

“Today?” he still didn’t believe what he was hearing, the absurdity of Craig not only walking for god-knows-how-long to his hockey practice, sitting out in the cold, planning this hours prior, going supposedly on a whim. It all seemed pretty out of character, “Well, I mean—”

“No?”

“No! I mean, shit—” Stan reached and stuck a hand beneath his cap and rubbed the back of his head. His evening itinerary after hockey practice consisted of an unfinished research paper and a few lessons from the one hybrid class offered that he had little intention of checking updates for, “…I’ve got nothing else to do, fine.”

Craig thought Stan sounded reluctant, he figured asking him if he truly meant it would be pushing his luck. Stan agreeing to give him a lesson or two came as a surprise, a pleasant one that went entirely against the sort of character he took Stan to be which was a mix between a complete idiot and oblivious to how his behavior affected the rest of everyone.

Without much as a gesture to follow, Stan headed towards the station wagon in front of the ice rink, only turning once to see if he’d follow.

* * *

 

Craig made a face as he threw out a fast food wrapper from the driver’s seat and moved a textbook from the floor beneath his feet, “You should really clean out your car.”

“ _You_ should know how to drive by now.” Stan adjusted the passenger side after closing the door behind him, “And you’re not getting out the parking lot with your feet like that—it’s a stick shift, dude.”

Craig looked to his right where in place of an easily readable automatic shift gear was a monstrosity that should’ve been left in the twentieth century. _Of course,_ he’d be the one to drive stick, only the most difficult people on earth did. With a resounding groan Craig looked up, expecting to see the face of an equally frustrated Stan but was met with the complete, exact opposite.

When Stan smiled, he had a single dimple on his left cheek that accentuated the gentle roundness of his face and he had a birthmark, a couple of red acne scars that interrupted his otherwise clear skin. Stan let his hair grow out a bit since middle school, without his cap his bangs fell right below his brow and slightly curled closer to the nape of his neck in the now slight humidity of the station wagon; part of it he tucked behind his ear where he’d also gotten a couple of piercings that suited his person and weren’t overwhelming to look at either. His cowlick, defiant adding to the disarray of helmet hair sat atop his head. For a moment Craig’s mouth fell agape; call it a momentary short circuit, a lapse in judgement, like the split second one touches a hot stove before retracting immediately.

He was positively lost, in both the next line of conversation, whether to steal another glance for the sake of looking would break his own rulebook further.

Stan reached over and tapped his thigh, interrupting Craig's epiphany, to instruct him to move his leg over to its proper position, “Foot on the clutch and take off the parking brake. Keep your hand on the gear,” he lazily rattled off each instruction as if operating the station wagon wasn’t any more difficult than reciting the alphabet backwards. And perhaps it was, “You’re gonna be using it the entire time unless you’re getting on the freeway in which case, uh, not so much.”

“Right.” Craig complied as he was then handed the keys to the ignition, “Were your parents collectors or something? This thing’s stupid old.”

“No, just cheap. Mom found it online for like six hundred bucks, it was in worse off shape before my dad had me fix up everything myself.” Stan reached upwards to align the rearview mirror to match what he assumed to be Craig’s line of sight after he neglected to do so.

“Made you?”

Stan hummed, leaning back into the passenger’s seat, “ _’Builds character’_ , Anyways um, to get the car moving you’re gonna put this thing into neutral, keep your foot down on the clutch before turning on the ignition or you’re gonna st—"

Before he could finish his sentence, Craig successfully caused Stan’s hideous 1995 Buick with a manual window crank, cracked windshield, old gym clothes mixed with a smell reminiscent of ranch dressing and scotch sputter to life, and unceremoniously die beneath them.

Craig failed his driver’s test six times, maybe seven times. Enough times to predict the next pattern of events: his proctor rolling their eyes, wordlessly ticking away at the checkboxes on their clipboard of each mistake he made including the ones he hadn’t yet, a snide comment about wasted time, how he especially should be well acquainted with the whole ordeal already, and if he hadn’t gotten the hang of it now he should call it quits. At that point he was fully convinced the people hired at the department were all temps with no one they could legally bully in the city so they moved to the permafrost he called home.

He’s ran stoplights, nearly lost control of the car they used for Driver’s ED, ran into a parked vehicle and onto the curb twice, even almost ran into a pedestrian. The next thing on his list had to be fucking up Stan’s car within seconds of being allowed inside it. It had to be, it was glaringly obvious from the moment he followed him across the parking lot that this was the course of action God **H** imself would graciously bestow upon him.

Dark brown eyes grew wide and his hand lingered on the ignition waiting for the exact reverse of what transpired, the boy waited for Stan to break his horrified silence with a barrage of insults, to kick him out into the cold, to leave him to walk home like he should’ve done instead of trudging from the school building to this third-grade ice rink on the edge of the county and seek out his help as if he was suddenly the last man on earth.

Instead, Stan snorted, “…it’ll cut out, but that’s okay.”

He raised his head from above the steering wheel leaving his trance, holding in a sigh of relief that he made a plan of releasing once he reached the house near the train tracks.

“Like you said, it’s pretty fucking old.” Stan reached to his right and buckled himself in, just like that. Unaffected, unbothered. Easy. Rolled with every punch and tide like he was born for it, “You alright there, Tucker?”

Craig still held in his breath, simply nodding before letting go of the keys.

That, along with the idea that Stan was unobservant.


End file.
